Seaon Premieres: Real World Cancun, Warehouse 13

Seems like it was just yesterday I was posting about all the season finales I was watching, but here we are, in the summer and there’s actually a good deal of new shows Em and I have been checking out. So, yeah, I’m watching more than just Wipeout (the couples episode of which was on last night and was, of course, awesome). So, in a strange twist of fate I never did a Gauntlet 2 season finale post so I’ll talk about it briefly. I liked the season as a whole, but I was disappointed in the the nearly zero gauntlet upsets. Every time someone called the big dog into the gauntlet, they lost and went home. Yawn. It still had the requisite amount of drama and familiar faces (as did the reunion episode).

Speaking of drama and reality show challenges, there’s a new season of Real World which started about three weeks ago. As many have noted, it seems like MTV tried to genetically engineer this season to be more bombastic, unlike the previous season which, on the surface, also seemed engineered for craziness. This year our 8 Real Worlders are staying in a hotel resort in Cancun. They even have a job, making sure kids on spring break don’t get too messed up. If they screw up they get sent home. Should make for good TV.

On the good TV front, in the very first episode two of the housemates meet non-RW girls at a club. One dude is with a younger girl and the other dude is completely making out with this older woman (definitely not a cougar or MILF). Eventually the younger girl turns to the guy she’s making out with and tells her that the older woman is her mom. Awesome.

I’m not completely sure if I like the cast or not. As usual I’m having trouble telling the girls apart and I’m still learning everyone’s names, but it’s weird watching these kids who are all younger than me (for years I wanted to be on the show, still do really). But weirder still is how clickey they are and how often those clicks change. One minute they all love each other, then it’s boys vs. girls and then everyone vs. one girl. It’s very high school, but I guess that’s what you get.

The funniest part for me, though, is how these seasons start to repeat themselves. You’ve got the girl with a boyfriend who claims they’ll be together forever, though the dude who knows here that’s also on the show says she was a huge slut before she met him (a nice little wrinkle), you’ve got the girl who doesn’t “deal” with “rudeness” or whatever, the dudes who are very clearly only looking to get laid, etc. As usual, you can catch up on all the episodes so far on MTV’s Real World site.

Another show we watched actually premiered this week on, ugh, SyFy called Warehouse 13. It’s your basic “agents relocated after experiencing supernatural” kind of story. You’ve got two secret service agents who get recruited to work at a giant place called Warehouse 13 that houses all the weird sci-fi type stuff the government doesn’t want us to know about (or is too dangerous for us to know about). It’s a combination of CreatureTech (look for a review of the graphic novel by the guy who created Earthworm Jim soon), B.P.R.D. and Fringe but with a more lighthearted feel (though, of course, everyone has their dark secrets).

The pilot was way too long at two hours and really REALLY dragged, but I think the show has potential and we’ll probably keep checking it out as long as it’s not opposite something else we like. I can get past the slightly tired plots (so far reminiscent of Buffy et al) because I like the characters for the most part and, I’ll admit it, there’s only so many reality shows I can watch in a season, though I do miss The Real Housewives of New Jersey (shame). You can watch the whole thing on Hulu or right here if you’d like:

Oh, speaking of Bravo shows, I watched about 6 minutes of that NYC Prep show and wanted to blow up that part of the city just to get rid of those awful, awful wastes of space. Yuck. I spent an hour afterwards playing F.E.A.R. 2 to diminish my criminal impulses.